Last month, in a post titled “Appalling! 3-star general touts church that boasts “Uncle Sam” is its “mission sending organization,” I wrote about Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson, the 3-star general commander of I Corps and commander of Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Lieutenant General Brunson is also a born again fundamentalist Christian who fully endorses the scheme of Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), to “plant” 273 more Manna churches near other military bases to convert service members at those bases — a tactic that Lieutenant General Brunson, speaking at this year’s Manna Church Memorial Day service, called “seizing key terrain.”
As I explained in my previous post, Manna Church, like other organizations that want to Christianize the military, such as Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry (now called CRU), exploits the fact that military personnel move from location to location, making them ideal to use as what these organizations refer to as “government-paid missionaries.” How does this work? Military members are recruited and “discipled” at one location, with the expectation that they will make new converts at their subsequent duty stations, making new disciples at each place they are stationed, who will in turn make more disciples at their future duty stations. Manna has given this tactic of using ever-relocating military personnel as missionaries for their church a name: the “Military Highway.”
As one of Manna’s pastors was quoted as saying in a CBN News article titled “Manna Church's God-Sized Goal: Planting a Church Near EVERY US Military Base in the World” (emphasis added):
“Uncle Sam, who's kind of become our mission-sending organization because he takes great talented people and relocates them, so that's kind of the vision.”
To back up a little bit for those who didn’t read my previous post about Lieutenant General Brunson and Manna Church, Brunson attended Manna Church for a number of years while stationed at Fort Liberty. He was brought into this church by his wife, a now-retired military judge, and was “born again” there. He was the speaker at Manna’s 2023 Memorial Day service, and although not in uniform while delivering his sermon, he violated multiple Army and DoD regulations by using his title and position while endorsing Manna’s Church and its church planting operation and allowing the church to use a photo of him in uniform in its promotional materials. And the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) called the Lieutenant General out on it, not only for his violation of military regulations, but because this senior flag officer wholeheartedly supports this church using U.S. military personnel as its missionary force to achieve its goal of “seizing key terrain,” as Lieutenant General Brunson called Manna’s planting of churches near military bases in the opening of his sermon at this year’s Manna Memorial Day service, giving a shout out to three of the churches that Manna has already planted near other large Army bases:
“I want to open up here today saying that I’m honored to be back with you again. I’m absolutely honored. I’m honored that we got Manna Leonard Wood joining us here on the net. I’m honored that we got Manna Killeen joining us on the net. … And Manna Newport News. When you think about military operations, you think about seizing key terrain and this church has always moved towards key terrain and I’m honored to be back home with you all right now.”
Because of MRFF, Lieutenant General Brunson, in this year’s appearance at Manna, didn’t violate the military regulations he violated last year and the video of his sermon from last year has been deleted from Manna’s website (although the promotional photo below of him in uniform from last year is still the site’s “Sermons” page as of this writing).
Needless to say, the Lieutenant General was none too pleased with MRFF’s “attack” on him. Although not naming MRFF by name, here’s what he had to say about it in this year’s Memorial Day sermon (emphasis added):
“But a funny thing happened to me on the way to Manna this time. A funny, funny thing happened. The funniest thing is, should you not enjoy what I’m going to do here tonight, you should have been here last year. That was phenomenal. So if you don’t enjoy something that I’m saying from this stage, you should have been here last year ’cause that was phenomenal, or so I’ve been told. The other funny thing that happened on the way here to Manna this time was there were some challenges. There were some bumps in the road. There were attacks. And know what? I felt the lord saying to me was it’s not the cross. Just words. Just words. But what’s unsettling is you find yourself trying to do a thing that’s right and somebody finds fault with it. But what the lord said is I got this. The battle’s not yours, it’s the lord’s. And when I did that – when I took my eyes off myself, when I got out of the mirror, ’cause I was feeling sorry for myself … but I was looking in the mirror and I was like ‘what am I gonna do?’ And the lord said you’re not gonna do anything. What you’re gonna do is what I told you to do – keep moving forward. You’re a man of action. Move forward. Or you can stay back here with the people telling you that you’re wrong. I chose to move forward. The lord said don’t just move forward, move to the window because somebody out there needs you. They need you to be doing what you’re doing. And I’m not the only one out there that the lord’s speaking to about that. There’s a mirror. There’s a window. And there’s a gospel. You get out of the mirror. Okay? ’Cause the lord loves you. He dearly, dearly loves you. Get out of the mirror for a little bit. Get to the window and see who needs you out there to walk out the gospel. So, that’s what I’m gonna do. And I know I won’t do it alone. ’Cause there’s people in Leonard Wood, there’s people at Newport News, there’s people in Killeen that are gonna live that way. There’s people right here at Cliffdale that are gonna live that way, too, okay? I felt the lord wanted me to share that with you tonight. I really do because somebody out there’s having a hard time right now, and people are telling you that what you’re doing is not gonna get it done. Put your faith in the lord. Put your feet on the path and move out. Trust me on that. It’s not as important that the enemy attacks us. What’s more important is God’s response to an attack on you. Focus on what God can do. Who is like the lord? We just sang that tonight. Who is like the lord? Who is like the lord? Nobody. But nobody. But nobody.”
Saving the weirdest for last, Lieutenant General Brunson went on to claim that he had a vision from Jesus of what Jesus wanted him to talk about in this year’s sermon — a vision that he claimed to have had on November 6, 2024, a date six months in the future:
“I was on a flight to Hawaii on the 6th of November, 2024, and I thought about you all here in this church in this place, and the lord gave me a vision of what he wanted me to talk to you about on this Memorial Day. It’s built partly on what I shared with you last year where I talked about the space on the floor right there where I was baptized, but he also reminded me that there’s a space right over there where there’s a young man who I baptized, and they’re all tied together. Those are my days, but the lord has days for each of you. The lord said give you a day – your Memorial Day – like my day, and remind them to memorialize my love for them.”
Yes, folks, this man receiving visions from Jesus six months in the future commands tens of thousands of our country’s troops between being commander of I Corps and commander of Joint Base Lewis-McChord. I don’t know about you, but we here at MRFF find that more than a little bit worrisome.